Archive for July, 2009:
twitter - Follow and Followed Alike…
I’ve found that for a given topic, affiliate marketing in this case, you can find a lot of good quality tweeps associated with the topic, and follow them expecting a ROF (Return On Follow) of new followers. I originally did this with the AffiliateTrust account and was stopped in my tracks at the wall with 2001 follows. The wall is twitter’s limit to following without an equal number of followers. The followers began accruing and after a few months of not following anyone new, sort of topped out at about 1750. Wanting to get over that 2001 wall and being so close, I decided to go for it. But how?
I’ve thought about using twitter apps that prune out follows who aren’t following back, but want a little more control over the process. Recently twitter added the new feature that places buttons for context menus on each follower and followed in your lists. I looked for a way to determine which of the followed are followers by examining the menu in the followed list. I found that ones following me had a DM option that was absent from ones not following. So I simply went down the list and un-followed most of the non-followers.
There were a couple problems that came up…
I found that the context menu covered up the next button in the list when using Firefox. To speed up removing hundreds of followed, I started at the bottom of the list rather than the top to overcome this.
The second was that removing people caused the page to backfill when advancing to the next page. This meant that I had to go back a page over and over to continue removal. To solve this I found the very last page of the followed list. How did I do it? Look at the address of the page. There will be a page number for the page you’re on. Divide your followed total by 20 and round up. Enter that as the page number to go directly to the last page. Then begin at the bottom of the last page and work your way backwards through the list.
I removed about a thousand followed yesterday which freed me to add new followers and I added about 800 in two separate session. After the first session of additions my followers suddenly dropped off to 1750. I don’t know why. All I can come up with is that I may have removed some followed that happen to have been following me. In any case, this meant I now had to gain 250 users to get over that wall instead of the original 150.
Where did I find ones to follow? I picked a tweep connected with Internet/affiliate marketing who has over 24,000 followers. I figured these would be well targeted for the topic. So I opened his follower list and went to work. This is actually easier than it sounds. I simply went down the list clicking follow follow follow… I wanted to be a little more selective though, so I skimmed the tweeps and primarily selected ones that were obviously personal accounts with portrait avatars and real names. I quickly began to notice patterns in some of the accounts and realized that a huge percentage of this persons followers were spammers. There were many relating to escort and dating services so I avoided most accounts with pretty girl avatars. No wonder he had over 24k followers!
After a few hours of work I hit last nights follower goal of 1900 at about 1:00AM, then went to bed. The followers were accruing at about two a minute. I expected to get over the wall by the time I got up.
Sure enough! This morning the count was right at 2090 and is now at 2120 and still climbing. Oh man, just realized that now that I’m over the wall, I’ve got another thousand to go after.
I’m not claiming that this technique will work for all twitter accounts. Like affiliate marketing, your twitter account will need to provide some value for your followers. And for longevity you should target tweeps that will be receptive to your message. You won’t meet these goals with the rampant “400 followers immediately” schemes. It takes work. Then, once you have a large audience, with carefully composed and balanced pitches, you can reach thousands…
And “pitches” is a topic for another day…
Of victory and defeat, confrontation is the victor!
It’s a very simple strategy. The observation of suspicious merchant activity is posted. The merchant is invited to the discussion and confronted with the facts. The resulting action or inaction determines whether the merchant’s affiliate program is listed in the trusted merchants list or the un-trusted merchants warning list. There is no brow beating, threats, or insults, but “just the facts ma’am“. The consequences are either good press, or bad press. And Internet press lasts forever.
A Victory…
It was discovered that Gold Star Nutrition (www.powerthin.com) exhibited extraneous reversal rates in their affiliate program statistics on Shareasale. A merchant alert * was sent. The next morning, John from Gold Star Nutrition registered with Affiliate Trust and constructive discussion ensued. John answered affiliate’s questions and explained the reason for the spike in reversals. Affiliates went away happy and John’s affiliate program earned a place on the trusted merchants list that is being developed for inclusion in the forum very soon. This is one of several recent victories resulting from Affiliate Trust merchant alerts *.
A Defeat…
While researching affiliate programs for fragrance merchants, a member noticed leaks on unlimitedperfumes.com, the website of Unlimited Perfumes Inc, a Shareasale merchant. The leaks included banners to other fragrance merchants and Google ads. A merchant alert * was sent on May 25th with no response and a second attempt was made to invite the merchant to the discussion on July 5th. A representative registered the next day and joined the discussion. He/she posted the reasoning that “Often time what we are seeing is the ads HELP us to convert at a higher rate because our pricing is the lowest on the market.“. After a little more discussion he/she assured us that “I have had my programmer remove all analytics and affiliate code, pending further discussion as a company. There should be no more “leaks.”“. This sounded good, but it was soon discovered that a price comparison banner leads to perfumecompare.com, another website owned by Unlimited Perfumes Inc. The plot thickens! On perfumecompare.com there were links to other perfume sites. Some of these other sites are also owned by Unlimited Perfumes Inc. Here’s the kicker… Other sites linked to from perfumecompare.com are fragrance sites that Unlimited Perfumes Inc. is an affiliate of! Oh what a tangled web we weave when… well you know! Not only is affiliate traffic potentially leaked to AdSense ads, but the traffic that Unlimited Perfume’s own affiliates deliver is redirected to earn Unlimited Perfumes commissions AS an affiliate. When these facts were presented to the rep, he/she disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since.
Unlimited Perfumes owns…
unlimitedperfume.com
unlimitedperfumes.com
perfume-room.com
perfumeroom.com
perfumecompare.com
They are affiliates of at least these…
FragranceNet
Perfume Worldwide
FragranceX
Scented Monkey
While I labeled the Unlimited Perfumes effort a defeat, is it really? The knowledge of merchants to avoid is as valuable as the knowledge of trusted merchants to join. That the confrontation happens is what matters!
AffililateTrust.org
Forum.AffiliateTrust.org
*Merchant Alerts is an exclusive feature of Affiliate Trust. Members may send official alerts to merchants through email under the umbrella of Affiliate Trust. The identity of the sender is not exposed and the emails are sent through the AT email system. These alerts notify the merchant of active discussion about their affiliate program and the type of concern raised by affiliates. They are invited to join the discussion and address the concerns of affiliates.
